Philippians - Verse-by-Verse Biblical Exegesis

WHO Philippians 1:14 kai. tou.j plei,onaj tw/n avdelfw/n evn kuri,w| pepoiqo,taj toi/j desmoi/j mou
perissote,rwj tolma/n avfo,bwj to.n lo,gon tou/ qeou/ lalei/n
VUL
Philippians 1:14 et plures e fratribus in Domino confidentes vinculis meis abundantius
audere sine timore verbum Dei loqui
LWB Philp. 1:15 On the one hand [with false motivation], some people [reversionists] are
proclaiming Christ even because of envy [pride, ambition] and strife [rivalry, contention],
but on the other hand, others [with true motivation] even because of goodwill.
KW Philp. 1:15 In fact, certain ones even because of envy and rivalry, but also certain others
because of good will are proclaiming Christ;
KJV Philippians 1:15 Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good
will:
TRANSLATION HIGHLIGHTS
Paul’s imprisonment motivated two groups of people to come forward and preach the gospel with
greater fervency. Using antithetic parallelism (on the one hand, on the other hand), he contrasts one
group having false motivation while the other group has true motivation. The apostate, reversionistic
crowd proclaimed Christ (Dramatic Present tense) out of envy and strife, just to irritate Paul in
prison. They were a petty, ambitious, divisive group of Christian individuals. The other crowd,
however, were fond of Paul and they proclaimed the gospel with goodwill.
REVELANT OPINIONS
Occurring nine times in the NT, “pthonos” features in several lists of evil qualities that characterize
the unredeemed life. It is one of the works of the flesh (Gal. 5:21), describes those whom God has
given up to a base mind (Rom. 1:29), and is a feature of life before conversion (Tit. 3:3) that is to be
put away by those who grow up to salvation. (P. O’Brien) There is considerable debate as to whether
the aforementioned persons are unbelievers or carnal believers. (LWB) Many of this type have
appeared in the church, who are envious because God has given greater gifts and more influential
positions to other men. They feel thrust into the background, their authority and their following have
been reduced, hence they carp, find fault, raise strife. They would show Paul and everybody else;
they would preach the Christ with such vim as to draw all eyes on themselves and away from Paul.
The fact that Rome had some of these causes little wonder. (R. Lenski)
He speaks with perfect candour of the unsound spiritual state of the separatists, their envy, strife, and
partisanship. But he has no anathema for their methods. (H. Moule) Paul does not accuse them of
false teaching, or of a perversion of the Gospel, but the whole spirit in which they approach their
task; consequently, they cannot be Judaizers or Gnostics. (F.W. Beare) They were Christians who
bore no love to the apostle personally, who were anxious to see him remain in prison, and who
intended to make that imprisonment as galling and irksome as possible, deriving a malicious